Bring on the Books for Everybody

"In this lively, always insightful but never predictable book, Jim Collins claims that literary culture is alive and well today, but that to understand it we must also understand the variety of institutions and technologies that house and drive it, its storage and delivery systems, and its new forms of connoisseurship. He makes us think about what it means to love literature, and how a cultural activity comes to be enjoyed as popular culture."-Linda Hutcheon, author of A Theory of Adaptation "Bring on the Books for Everybody is a lively and entertaining assault on some widely held shibboleths about popular culture. . . . It is salutary to read a work that takes the ordinary reader seriously while engaging in literary criticism." -- Andrew Hadfield * TLS * "An extraordinary book about books. . . . This book is full of surprises, from a deft analysis of the true cultural significance of online reader reviews to a fresh look at how an explosion of literary reading has overtaken us from the US to the UK, via Canada, and back again, through the proliferation of book clubs, book superstores, e-retailers, literary festivals, film adaptations etc. Anyone who feels literary culture is threatened by the rise of the digital should read this book; our literary culture is on the cusp of a digital golden age." -- Kate Pullinger * Globe and Mail * "This is a book about why books matter. It is written in a way that offers a masterclass for researchers in constructing scholarly monographs that are accessible, quirky, different and defiant. To use an Australianism, this book 'issa bloody beaudy.' Buy it. Borrow it. Download it. Now. It is a book that we will remember where we were when we we first read it. This is a game-changer for popular cultural studies, media studies and the new humanities." -- Tara Brabazon * Times Higher Education * "For those who wonder why they read what they do, for writers who want to know how to cater to an audience, for book marketers who want to know how to reach consumers, for everybody wanting an up-to-date and insightful take on contemporary American culture-bring on this book." -- Janelle Adsit * Foreword Reviews *

Jim Collins is Professor of Film and Television, and English at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Architectures of Excess: Cultural Life in the Information Age and Uncommon Cultures: Popular Culture and Post-Modernism; the editor of High-Pop: Making Culture into Popular Entertainment; and a co-editor of Film Theory Goes to the Movies.

Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Digital Books, Beach Chairs, and Popular Literary Culture 1 Part I. The New Infrastructure of Reading: Sites, Delivery Systems, Authorities 1. The End of Civilization (or at Least Civilized Reading) as You Know It: Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and Self-Cultivation 39 2. Book Clubs, Book Lust, and National Librarians: Literary Connoisseurship as Popular Entertainment 80 Part II. The Literary Experience in Visual Cultures 3. The Movie Was Better: The Rise of the Cine-Literary 117 4. "Miramaxing": Beyond Mere Adaptation 141 Part III. Popular Literary Fiction 5. Sex and the Post-Literary City 183 6. The Devoutly Literary Bestseller 221 Bibliography 267 Index 271